Strategic thinking means maintaining your long-term vision while taking actionable steps to accomplish it. This requires creative thinking, research, and problem-solving, among other skills. (You can find these qualities in potential candidates if you ask the right questions in an interview.)
Do you have a good understanding of what strategic thinking looks like for your team? Developing strategic thinking in individuals requires different tactics than fostering these skills across your entire team.
This article offers practical steps leaders can take to cultivate team strategic thinking.
How Do You Get Your Team to Think Strategically?
Building a strategic mindset in employees and team members requires a determination to prioritize the effort by its team leader. Those guiding the team need to be an example and think like a strategic leader while learning how to lead their team strategically.
Communicate the Big Picture
Your team will function best when you share and communicate a strategic plan, vision, or objective that every team member can have a line of sight to and use as a strategy decision filter in their everyday activities.
As a leader, the best way to approach this is to conduct a planning or orientation meeting by
- Clearly stating the strategic vision, project, or initiative.
- Explain how this vision, project, or initiative will impact the team or organization over the long haul. It is valuable for team members to understand the strategy involved so they understand their contributions in context.
- If possible, illustrate how each team member’s work and contribution will affect the initiative or project. This helps to build commitment and start to establish individual ownership and accountability.
Ensure there is enough time in the meeting (or follow-up meetings) to answer questions from team members, provide clarification, and address concerns. This helps to ensure everyone has a clear understanding of the overarching task at hand and how their individual strategic efforts support the team.
Ask Team Members Specific Questions
To build strategic thinking in team members, ask them open-ended questions that will spark strategic thought. This can be done in formal or informal situations and will help develop a strategic mindset.
Strategic questions to ask include:
- What will be the potential outcome if we choose to do X instead of Y?
- What variables are we not thinking about that could help us reach our objective?
- What variables or unseen forces could keep us from reaching our objective?
- How do daily operations prevent us from being proactive?
- Do we have all the data and information we need about this project or initiative?
- What is our plan to win?
- Is there anything we should change in our process or approach?
- How do you think we should measure success? What are the key performance indicators?
- What might our competitors be thinking or doing better than us?
These probing questions send a message that team members’ input is valued, supporting strategy is a part of everyone’s job description, and that team members can share ideas and speak freely. Whether you are brainstorming in a one-on-one meeting or a group setting, be open to creative thinking, creativity and diverse perspectives. You can sift through and prioritize thoughts and ideas when it is appropriate.
Learn other ways to instill and inspire strategic thinking in your team members.
Encourage Growth Through Collaboration
Developing strategic thinking skills is a gradual process that takes time and patience. Many team members would rather stay in their comfort zone than expand their skills and explore new areas. Often, they are afraid of making mistakes.
Seeing colleagues strive to improve with the freedom to make mistakes and learn along the way will make others feel comfortable doing the same. Effective leaders foster a culture of reassurance, encouraging team members to step outside their comfort zones and explore new ideas.
Peer collaboration is a wonderful way to grow strategic thinking skills. Encourage team members to exchange strategic ideas, solutions, and action plans with each other. This important activity will help them further apply strategic concepts and skills to their own situations with the support of other team members.
Consider providing team members with additional resources, such as our piece on How to Act Strategically at Work.
Provide Practice Opportunities
While team members can absorb theory and concepts to better their strategic thinking, they won’t fully develop these skills until they practice them. Exemplary leaders provide team members with opportunities to put strategic thinking into action. It is important to set the tone that as a leader, there is a need to balance long-term priorities with short-term demands. This sets an expectation that everyone must have a vision on how their work adds value to their own supporting strategy, or the strategy of the team.
Encourage team members to think creatively, challenge the status quo and take smart risks.
Take care, however, that the stakes aren’t too high as team members test their skills. If a strategy fails and has an adverse impact on the team, they may become overly cautious and less likely to try again.
After a team member plans and executes a strategy, schedule a meeting with that team member. Discuss the lessons learned from their effort so they can improve and be prepared for the next strategic opportunity.
You can also provide them with examples of strategic thinking at work inside and outside of the organization.
Create More Strategic Teams with CMOE
Developing strategic thinking within your team demands dedication and time. But you don’t have to navigate this journey alone. With CMOE’s support and resources, you can unlock your team’s full potential and drive success forward.
Discover how our Applied Strategic Thinking workshop can transform your team’s approach to strategy.
